Thursday’s commute: let the games begin

Tomorrow is a big day for Bay Area commuters. Tolls on all but one of the seven bridges are going up to $5; on the Bay Bridge, the toll during peak commute hours—5am-10am and 3pm-7pm—will rise to $6. And of course, the days of the free carpool are no more. (KALW covered this a few weeks back; a lively discussion on the logistics of splitting $2.50 three ways can be found here.)

Needless to say, executing a change of such magnitude requires a lot of planning.

The folks at Caltrans told me yesterday that they’ve been hard at work installing clocks above the entrance to the Bay Bridge toll plaza, as well as in all tollbooths, to make sure everyone’s on the same peak-hour page. All toll collectors have also taken a four-hour class on strategies to deal with irate or irrationally angry drivers.

The upcoming changes have also spawned some transit entrepreneurship. BART representatives could be found at casual carpool points around the Bay this morning handing out free $10-value tickets; the accompanying flyers advised would-be carpoolers that “BART invites you to give our fast, reliable, envrionmentally-friendly Transbay service a try for your morning commute.”

It won’t necessarily be an easy sell: the cheapest transbay BART fare, from West Oakland to Embarcadero, is $2.90—40 cents more than the carpool toll, and you definitely have to pay it all yourself. But BART spokesman Linton Johnson told me the organization’s hoping that once people try the train service, its advantages will become obvious.

So how will it all shake out? Will the new toll drive people off the freeway and onto transit? Will the toll-averse abandon casual carpool in droves? Will the higher fares lessen congestion to the point where the trip is actually more pleasant for those who stick it out?

Some of these questions will take a while to answer. In the meantime, I’ll be out at the Bay Bridge toll plaza starting bright and early tomorrow to see how things go. But I can’t be everywhere! So whether you’re taking BART, AC Transit, the ferry, casual carpool or some other mode of transport I don’t yet know of, let me know how it goes: in the comments, on Facebook, or via Twitter to @reedminer. Happy travels…